Beecroft Employment Law Review

Compensated No Fault Dismissal should be introduced. This would require changes to the primary legislation including the Employment Rights Act 1976. BIS should also proceed with its proposal to extend the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from one to two years.

Legislation should be introduced to ensure that the 'Polkey" reduction applies to the basic award as well as the compensatory award.

The compensation for loss of earnings part of the award for discriminatory dismissal should be capped as described above.

Micro businesses with less than five employees should be excluded from the auto-enrolment scheme. This would require an amendment to the Pensions Bill, which is currently going through Parliament. Businesses with between five to ten employees should be given the right to opt out of auto-enrolment.

The funding gap of a pension scheme should not crystallise if a restructuring of the company concerned is for legitimate business reasons.

The introduction of the part of the EU IORP Directive that changes the solvency rules for defined benefit plans should be resisted.

A simple flexible way should be found to put together multiple pension pots.

I do not believe that it is sensible to make individuals pay £8 p.a. to be included in the premium service. The costs of collecting the money, including chasing those who have forgotten to pay or decided not to pay, will be considerable. For those who don't pay but do apply for subsequent checks the costs to themselves and employers of getting a new check will also be high. The extra administration and complexity of the charge is not worth it for £50m p.a: the service should be free.

Rather than updating the BRP system to include the records of everyone with a right to work in the UK, a record should be created for each person who applies successfully for a job after a certain date. Having decided to offer the applicant a job the potential employer would examine their documents and send them to the Border Agency whether or not he felt the applicant had the right to work. As at present he could immediately hire an applicant who he felt did have the right to work. The Home Office would check the documents and enter the details of the person concerned into the system. The employer would automatically be informed of the record created, and would have to dismiss anyone who the Border Agency said did not have the right to work. He would not need to keep any records and would automatically be told by the system when an employee's right to work is about to expire. With the link to the NI number policing the system would be straightforward. Thus a modest amount of one-off work by the Home Office would eliminate the need for the first employer to keep records and the need for subsequent employers to spend significant amounts of time checking new employees' paperwork. It would identify workers who do not have work permits but are being paid through the PAYE system. It would eliminate any risk of well-meaning employers fearing or facing prosecution for honest mistakes.

Consideration should also be given to issuing each person whose records have been added in this way to the BRP system with a physical BRP.

The application form should be an interactive online form which would not permit application until the mandatory questions had been answered. If mistakes have been made the applicant should be able to amend the existing application (rather than completing a whole new one) and should not have to re-pay the fee each time this happens.

I believe that the opt out described above should be implemented for all businesses with less than ten employees.

The requirement to register each position with Job Centre Plus should be dropped.

The Simplification Act should be introduced as soon as possible, even though it has one hundred and forty two pages, three hundred and forty seven clauses and seven schedules.

The UK law should be changed to incorporate the concept inherent in the EU Directive that harmonisation of the terms and conditions of transferred and original employees of the transferee company can be enforced after one year. If this cannot be done within the provisions of the EU Directive the EU should be lobbied to amend the Directive to reflect the UK's different structure of employment contracts.

A much more detailed explanation, based on case law, of the meaning of the ETO exemption should be made available to employers.

The UK law should be changed such that a transferring employer can make redundant employees who if transferred would immediately be made redundant for valid ETO reasons by the transferee employer.

The EU should be lobbied to change its T.U.P.E. Directive to state that T.U.P.E. does not apply to the employees of a business that is in administration. If this change is accepted then UK law should be changed accordingly.

The service provider provisions of the UK law should be repealed and replaced by a better way of identifying whether or not a transfer is subject to T.U.P.E.

The consultation period for collective redundancies should be 30 days (or five days in the case of insolvency) regardless of the number of employees to be made redundant. If the business is in a formal insolvency process speed is of the essence if the business is to be saved and the consultation period for all types of collective redundancy should be further reduced, perhaps to five days.

Equal Pay Audits should not be required if an employer loses an equal pay case at a tribunal. This would involve announcing that the Government is not going to proceed with the proposal on which it has recently consulted and which has been poorly received by business organisations.

Abolishing the GLA should be seriously considered. It does not attempt to even measure the extent of the injuries suffered by the workers whose mission it is to safeguard. It devotes less than 1% of its Annual Report to outlining the other problems it has identified that might affect these workers. It is hard to believe that the Health and Safety Executive and the normal processes of the law would not achieve a similar result at far less cost. This would require repeal of the current Gangmasters Licensing Act and accompanying regulations.

The third party harassment provisions of the Equality Act 2010 Law should be rescinded.

The Government should decide if the likely consequences including infraction of not implementing the Agency Workers Directive before the deadline of the end of 2011 are worth bearing in order to avoid the damaging results of the Directive.

The new Non-Statutory Code of Practice referred to above should be introduced, and a much simplified regulation enacted to replace the current thirty three regulations and six schedules. Meanwhile the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate should be told to behave as if the new Code of Practice as it will relate to internet agencies of the type described above had been implemented.

The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate should be closed when the Non-Statutory Code of Practice has been introduced.

The impact of the removal of the DRA on employers' willingness to recruit older workers and on the overall effectiveness of the workforce should be closely monitored. If the impact is very negative a DRA, probably at a higher age than was recently the case, should be reintroduced.

The recommendation of the ETSSB for improving the consistency of employment tribunal findings should be implemented.

The recommendations of the forthcoming judge lead review of the current rules for employment tribunals should be implemented as soon as possible after they are published.

The steps already announced by the government for reducing the number of cases that result in a tribunal should be implemented as soon as possible, with the exception of the proposal to fine employers who are found not to have followed the unfair dismissal rules. The thirty point ACAS guidelines for the unfair dismissal process should be reviewed. If possible they should be made simpler and more easy to follow without losing their specificity which is helpful in defending accusations that they were not followed correctly.

Charging a fee for employees who apply for an employment tribunal should be introduced as soon as possible. The fee levels proposed by BIS should be accepted. The rules for the remittance of fees should be amended to allow account to be taken of the applicants' wealth as well as their income.

The issue of no win – no fee legal services as they affect employment tribunals should be included in the broader review of such services that is already being conducted.